The present invention relates generally to a method and system of providing an interactive navigational and mapping tool. More specifically, the present invention relates to a novel method and system for providing a linearly arranged visual display for the purpose of simplifying the navigation process, making it easier to stay on course, and reducing the incidence of getting lost.
The difficulty with nearly all mapping and navigational technology today is that the underlying assumptions used to generate the representation of the map are based on an antiquated navigational representation system. Principally, all of the available navigational aids rely on the well-known point-arc-polygon (“cartographic”) representation. This point-arc-polygon paradigm, which is the underlying principle used by today's maps, is derived from the introduction of latitude by the Greeks around 225 B.C. and accurate longitude measurements in the seventeenth century. For geographers of that time period, the best graphic representation to depict areas on Earth was found to be a representation that was produced from the perspective of a bird several hundred feet up in the sky. This “bird's eye” view was then thought to be the most compact way of representing large areas in writing, and compact drawings were important at that time because maps were being drawn by hand on expensive materials. In this manner, the smaller the maps, the less manual labor and costly materials required for producing them.
Ultimately, because of the difficulty and cost associated with the production of maps, the principal purpose for maps was to represent land boundaries and other non-road related land features. Most importantly, land boundaries were critical because until fairly recently in terms of history, finding new land, clearing and planting it, and fighting for it preoccupied most everyone's time and energy. Roads, on the other hand, were few and far between and had little direct monetary value, other than the toll fees they generated for the owners of the land they passed through. Most people never traveled more than a few miles from their homes. Furthermore, at that time most roads were mere narrow dirt pathways. Rain, snow, slides, horses' hoofs, and cart wheels continuously damaged the roads, necessitating frequent redirecting and relocating. Consequently, maps were notoriously unreliable when it came to depicting roads. Therefore, in cartographic maps, because of the supreme importance originally accorded to non-road related land features and their boundaries, these features are clearly visible and highly detailed. Roads, on the other hand, are shown as thin lines that meander all over the place, their paths and directions dictated by the topography of the landmass they cross, and by the administrative jurisdictions controlling them.
Today, however, travelers are much more concerned with the roads they travel on than with the landmass they pass through. Since the advent of the automobile at the beginning of the 20th century, travelers have needed to know much more about the roads they travel, because navigating a 3,000-pound car at 65 miles an hour is highly dependent on road conditions and the interconnectivity of those roads. In this regard, travelers now want highly detailed information about the roads, including the number of lanes, grade, pavement quality, lane markings, lighting, speed limits, directions, and many other road-specific attributes. The difficulty is that relatively little has changed in the way that roads are represented on present day maps. Except for some types of travel, such as sightseeing, travelers are not generally concerned with the landmass situated between their start and destination points. They cannot afford to spend much time looking out the window or at information related to the landmass, lest they be late to where they are going, or worse, get into an accident.
Currently, the most commonly used navigational aids include pre-printed maps, map books, on-demand computer maps, compasses, and global positioning system (GPS) based navigational devices. Generally, all of these navigational aids are based on, or rely upon, information obtained from cartographic maps. The difficulty is that whenever geographic features and feature classes are represented on a communication medium, e.g. in print, on a computer display monitor, or on a TV set monitor, geometric generalization necessarily takes place. As a result of the limiting aspects of cartographic representation, a large amount of generalization must be performed in order to make a displayed map readable. The need for generalization, such as for example, the simplification of the shapes of displayed figures, exaggeration of a figure's size, displacement of a figure relative to its actual location, and removal of a figure altogether introduce additional limitations to cartographic representation. These generalizations result in increasing the level of graphic abstraction relative to the original surveyed form of the geographic features and feature classes described. This problem becomes further amplified when a low-resolution display device is utilized to display and print maps.
Each particular form of navigational aid from the prior art has its own unique drawbacks. For example, while pre-printed maps, such as the one depicted in FIG. 1, are widely available and can be purchased in retail outlets or via the Internet, these maps use the conventional cartographic method of visual presentation (see FIG. 1). Some newer style maps try to create a sense of perspective. However, while these perspective-style maps are more attractive than their non-perspective counterparts, this style of representation is not necessarily better for navigating because the images depicted still do not represent the typical images travelers see when navigating in real life. Unless they are at the top of a hill, travelers see things from eye-level, with no long-view perspective. Accordingly, these perspective-enhanced maps (often referred to as “3-D”) do not offer a significant cognitive improvement.
Generally, today's pre-printed maps present a series of problems. Regardless of the current direction of travel, pre-printed maps are oriented to show North at the top, thus making it difficult to get orientated when traveling in any direction other than a Northerly direction. When these maps are rotated to match the user's actual heading, their labels end up upside down, at an angle, or sideways, making the labels difficult to read, especially since typically they are shown in small fonts. Further, the conventional maps are typically large in size and made of thin paper, and thus are difficult to hold while walking, driving, or while outdoors in inclement weather. Their large size also requires that they be folded or rolled when not in use. Their small print and the multitude of text, lines, symbols and graphics all crowded together makes them difficult to read and understand, especially by people with bad eyesight. They are also hard to orient in the direction of travel without a compass, a task that is particularly difficult for untrained users. Retail outlets may not carry the latest version of maps that cover regions beyond the local area of the retail outlet, a problem that is not readily apparent to the buyers. Finally, users may need several such maps to cover a single trip.
Similar in nature to pre-printed maps, map books such as the Thomas Guides™ and Thomas Bros. Road Atlases™ are pre-printed collections of related maps in bound book form (Thomas Guides and Thomas Bros. Road Atlases are trademarks of Rand McNally Company). They attempt to get around some of the handling problems of single sheet pre-printed maps by segmenting large geographic areas into smaller areas and placing them onto separate pages. While this makes the individual maps easier to handle, map books introduce their own problems. Most importantly, it is difficult to follow a planned travel route that spans several pages within the book. This requires the user to follow one portion of a road on one page to another portion of the same road on another page where the respective pages in the map books are not necessarily adjacent to each other. In addition, map books can be rather heavy and cumbersome to hold while looking for the right map. Finally, map books are rather expensive, typically costing between $30 and $40 each and can be difficult to find in stores located outside of the geographic areas covered by their maps.
Another navigational aid used in the prior art is the compass. Compasses consist of a thin piece of magnetic material that is free to rotate on a pivot mounted in a compass case. The North-seeking pole on the magnetic material is indicated and the points of the compass are marked to indicate North, South, East and West. Similarly, digital compasses have been introduced which display the compass points and the direction of travel digitally. Since compasses on their own do not give the user enough information to travel from one point to another, a traveler must use a compass in conjunction with a map, wherein such usage requires some level of training and practice. Further, because compasses are magnetic devices, their accuracy can be severely affected by proximity to ferrous metals and by physical location. In most cases, an initial calibration is needed if a compass is installed inside a vehicle or boat.
In response to the bulky and cumbersome nature of printed forms of maps, computer maps that are printed or displayed using computer devices are increasingly used for navigation purposes. However, computer maps also have several problems. FIG. 2 for example is a conventional map of a complete trip produced using the service available at www.mappoint.com and FIG. 3 is a “LineDrive” format map of the same trip as depicted in FIG. 2 produced using the service available at www.mappoint.com. (Mappoint and LineDrive are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation).
The primary problem with today's computer maps is their low-resolution. Currently, computer displays typically have resolutions in pixels of 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024, with typical monitor sizes of 15″, 17″ and 19″. When displaying a map formed from a large array of pixels on a computer monitor, many of the features and text may become illegible or disappear entirely. Since there is a wide variety of monitor sizes and resolutions, and the variation in resolution between devices could be as high as a factor of 5, computer maps designers have created conceptual and semantic generalizations to display certain features. Principally, digital map designers have made decisions to omit entire feature classes, reclassify features into different or new feature classes, and represent features and feature classes using symbols and icons. As a result, most computer generated cartographic maps are difficult, if not impossible, to read and use effectively when displayed on the monitors of small form devices such as palmtop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), GPS-based systems, and mobile telephones.
The next advance in computerized mapping is computerized mapping with an active GPS locator. GPS-based systems provide a user with 24-hour three-dimensional position, velocity and time information to identify the user's exact location on or near the surface of the Earth. The signal data is then used in conjunction with a digital map that is held resident in the user's device to place a representation of the user's position on a cartographic map. There are currently three satellite navigation systems operational, or soon-to-be operational, GPS (U.S. operated), GLONASS (Russian-operated), and GALILEO (European-operated). In addition, Wireless Assisted GPS systems (A-GPS) such as those available from SnapTrak, Inc., use a hybrid of satellite and terrestrial signals, which enables them to operate more effectively than unassisted GPS in environments such as indoors, and high-rise urban areas.
GPS-based systems are used in a wide range of directional, tracking, and monitoring applications on land, water and in the air and they are becoming increasingly popular, especially in vehicles and for wilderness trekking. When given exact starting and ending locations for a trip, GPS-based systems with route-guidance capabilities can provide turn-by-turn travel directions, visually and/or by voice. GPS-based systems display the current position on a map that moves in translation and rotation as the user moves, or as a fixed North-up map on which an indicator moves to indicate the current position. As with all of the previously discussed navigational systems, GPS-based systems also have a number of problems associated with them. Since GPS-based devices contain several electronic and mechanical components, extensive software, and very large databases depicting cartographic map representations that require constant updating in the field, these systems typically cost over $500 (in 2005). Due to space constraints, most of the installed displays are up to twenty times smaller than typical computer monitors, making it difficult to show any information other than the most basic, omitting much of the information critical for navigating, such as most of the roads. This problem is compounded by the fact that the resolution of the displays is relatively low, making it practically impossible to read small text and graphics from the driver's seat, while maintaining a safe driving position. Accordingly, unless the GPS-based device provides audible voice turn-by-turn instructions, GPS-based systems are of limited help while engaged in other attention-intensive activities such as driving. For this reason, new regulations require that vehicles be in a parked position in order to access certain of the systems' functions such as setting a new destination address.
Further limiting the usefulness of GPS-based navigation is the fact that some information is inaccurate due to the delay between the time the data is captured in the field and the time it is updated on the users' display. Often, this is coupled with the fact that the images displayed on the screen move with a somewhat jerky motion because of the time it takes to populate each screen with the intensive graphics displayed by cartographic maps and because the display is refreshed every second or so. In addition, information about intervening intersections and surrounding areas around the programmed route is typically left out or is not available. Accordingly, the turn-by-turn directions address only the transition points i.e. points that require decisions to be made in order to stay on the original course. The user is thus kept uninformed regarding any information that is relevant in between the transition points for periods sometimes lasting tens of intersections and tens of miles. This creates anxiety for the user and is a major cause of cognitive overload.
Finally, GPS systems do not provide much assistance for users that are not traveling to a precisely-defined destination or address. Little, if any, assistance is provided for such “address-less” travel, such as way-finding when lost, traveling in familiar areas, cruising about, or sightseeing.
Ultimately, the problem with all of these maps and devices is grounded in the cartographic representation that they utilize to define spatial relationships for the user. In each case, the chosen user interface makes it difficult for the user to employ the navigational aid in a manner that is truly helpful. Psychologists have found that people's perception of space is experience-based. The human brain is wired such that people must experience space in person in order to fully understand it. This experience-based view is in direct contrast to the abstract way in which space is described by cartographic maps, (Newtonian space containing Euclidian objects). Maps use abstract mental constructs, such as points, lines and polygons (Euclidian objects), which cannot be experienced through the human senses. The points, arcs, and polygons of cartographic maps have no counterparts in the real world, and thus, most people have difficulty reading maps because they simply cannot imagine in their mind's eye something that they have not personally experienced. This causes the human brain to fight and block the cartographic maps' attempts to represent space. Merely looking at a map does not substitute for the direct and personal experience humans need in order to understand space.
Reducing or totally eliminating this dichotomy between the manner in which people actually perceive space and the way in which cartographic maps represent space has not been a priority in the world of cartography. Cartographers have not consulted with specialists in ergonomics or experts in mass-media communications to assist them in confronting and resolving problems of human perception when attempting to understand and utilize cartographic representations. Marshall McLuhan, arguably the father of mass-media communication science, stated that “the medium is the message”, i.e. messages take much of their meaning from the means by which they are delivered to the readers, listeners, and viewers. Thus, a clue to solving the dichotomy between how people perceive space and how cartographic maps describe it is to replace such maps with representations that evoke spaces that people have actually experienced.
Due to the general unfamiliarity and discomfort most users have with the spatial representations that are used in cartographic maps, reading and interpreting such maps requires a great deal of mental and sensory activity. A user must use scales to convert distances and areas, they must rotate images, they must read very small letters, symbols and numbers, and they must be able to track thin lines that weave in and out, all of which is made more difficult because the text and graphics (e.g. points, arcs, polygons, logos, icons) are usually densely packed together into small areas. Furthermore, some navigation systems use perspective geometry to depict roads and exit lanes as if viewed from an angle from above and narrowing in the distance. The perspective images generated may not be familiar to users, as they do not represent the actual images they see when they are within sight of roads or exit lanes in real life. All of these activities take away time and attention from the main tasks of traveling, such as driving, riding, running, walking, and sightseeing.
Cognitive load research has shown that short-term memory is limited in the number of elements it can contain simultaneously. As a result, in the presence of any distractions, task performance that depends on the use of short-term memory quickly starts to decay. The price of the high cognitive load associated with reading and interpreting maps is that the great majority of people have difficulty using maps, especially while performing other tasks. The newer computer-based navigation systems, whether GPS-based, standalone computer-based, or Internet-based, alleviate some of the cognitive overload problems, however, they introduce new ones, such as low resolution displays and printers, and performing new tasks necessary to operate the systems themselves. Because of the built-in cognitive overload of these systems, many information and entertainment products and services are impractical to use in conjunction with them. Thus, major commercial opportunities are missed, technological synergy is squandered, and users continue to have navigation difficulties. Accordingly, minimizing the short-term memory requirements and reducing the overall cognitive load are essential for creating usable maps and navigation systems. Whereas viewing landmass through a bird's eye view from hundreds or thousands of feet above is satisfactory for that purpose, to clearly see the roads and to know all that matters about them requires a much different view.
In addition to consuming a large amount of short-term recall capacity, most navigational aids base their instructions to users on numerical information such as distance and time. This presents a series of problems. First, it requires keeping an accurate count of the distances traveled and the time passed for each stage of a trip. Second, since distances are hard to measure on maps, the numbers used may be inaccurate. Third, some people travel faster and others travel slower. Finally, numeric reckoning is only satisfactory for about half of the general population. It is estimated that the general population is evenly divided between left-brain and right-brain thinkers. Numeric reckoning is a left-brain activity and thus it is not a satisfactory communication method for right-brain thinkers. Right-brain thinkers prefer landmark-based reckoning because it is picture-based and visual, rather than data-based and auditory (NOTE: text is an auditory form of communication as it is a symbolic representation of sounded words). Right brain thinkers cannot effectively visualize how long a distance is, or estimate how long it takes to travel that distance. One of the easiest ways to navigate is to match real life landmarks (e.g. intersections, points of interest, signs, or any other visible thing, place, structure, or marking) with their respective representations on a map and/or directions given. Unfortunately, this is not an easy feat to accomplish using today's navigational aids, given the typically small size of their maps' text and graphics, and the paucity of landmarks shown.
To get such a view, we need to get much closer to the roads' surfaces, we need to analyze and record the roads' relevant attributes, and we must do this from every possible direction of travel and point of view. We need to depict everything that matters about the roads in a way that is quick and easy to read, and clear and unambiguous to understand. Most importantly, we must do it in a way that does not detract from the travelers' enjoyment, or distract them from safely performing other travel-related tasks, whether they are driving, riding, running, walking, listening to music, or talking on the cell phone.
Accordingly, there is a need for a new navigational aid that provides a representational display that is modernized as compared to cartographic map representations. There is a further need for a navigational aid that uses a different cartographic paradigm in that the display devotes more visual space to roads than to landmass while utilizing experiential rather than abstract representations of space. There is yet a further need for a navigational aid that takes into consideration the human factors in engineering and that reduces the cognitive load experienced by users, while also including more pictures in order to assist “right-brain dominant” users. Finally, there is a need for a navigational aid that satisfies the needs of “address-less” travel.